


Solitude

by LookingForDroids



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Archivist!Jon, Gen, POV First Person, Statement Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 22:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20824973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: Statement of Patricia Bailey, regarding a stranger on a train.Or: a woman has a run-in with the Archivist.(Written for this prompt on the kink meme:https://rusty-kink.dreamwidth.org/1380.html?thread=6756#cmt6756)





	Solitude

_Statement of Patricia Bailey, regarding..._

A stranger on a train.

_A stranger on a train. Yes. Yes, of course. And yes, we really do have to have the recorder running. I’m sorry. Statement taken direct from subject by Martin Blackwood, assistant to Peter Lucas, Head of the Magnús Institute, at subject’s request. Statement begins._

~

I am a very private person. You need to understand that. I always have been, for as long as I can remember. Maybe it has its roots in some old primary school trauma which does not pertain to this experience, some acquired sense of alienation, or maybe it’s just who I am.

It’s not even as though I have much to hide. I live a boring life, and like it that way. I’ve never committed a serious crime, or even very many petty ones. I don’t _think_ I have any disgusting habits, and my sexual proclivities are probably best described as nonexistent. I just... prefer solitude. It always felt safer that way, I suppose. For whatever reason, I’ve never quite been free of fear until the moment when I can step across my threshold to a quiet room, a solid wall at my back and the certainty that whatever I choose to do or say, there’s no one there to judge.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bad with people. Rather good with them, I like to think. I’ve got friends, I get on well with my co-workers, I’ve never had problems with clients. I’ve made an art out of directing the flow of small talk – asking people about their pets, their homes, their children, without ever letting the conversation come back around to myself. Most everyone I know enjoys a chance to talk about their own lives, and I can’t deny I enjoy listening, as long as no one expects me to share.

So of course I never told anyone about the spiders.

I’m not going to tell you about the spiders, either. This isn’t _about_ the damned spiders. This is about –

You know that... crawling feeling you get on the back of your neck when you on public transport, minding your own business, and all of a sudden, you can tell that there’s someone watching you? That prickle on your skin, the urge to dismiss it as nothing, the gut-deep instinctual awareness that whatever logic might tell you about how people can’t actually sense the eyes of a stranger settling on them, you’re not imagining anything? Hah. Maybe you do. Maybe you really do. Either way, I was on the train heading home from work, comfortable in the feeling of being just one more tired body in a crowd of bodies, when I got that feeling more abruptly and intensely than I ever had in my life. I tried to tell myself it was nothing, but I couldn’t help it. I looked up, past the press of commuters, and I wasn’t imagining anything. There was a man there, sat on the seat opposite me and just to the left, and he was watching me.

I think what struck me first about him was that he didn’t look healthy. He was thin to the point of being gaunt, with greying hair at odds with a youthful face, and there was something... god, it’s such a cliche, but there was something not quite right about him. About his eyes. I do remember those eyes, though I rather wish I didn’t. They were hollow and dark in a sunken face, like he hadn’t slept in far too long, and they had a sort of impossible depth to them, like those images of black holes. Enough weight to drag galaxies down and in. More than anything else, though, he looked hungry.

Not, you understand, the kind of hungry look that creeps sometimes get when they stare at you on public transport, like they’re imagining you naked and not even trying to hide it. I’m talking about actual hunger. Which was odd, I remember thinking, because he didn’t look homeless, or even very poor. He was dressed like some sort of shabby professor, maybe, or a librarian. Not rich, but no one who would be starving. I wondered if he needed a fix, and then I told myself that it didn't matter what he needed, and just because he was staring at me didn’t mean it was a good idea to stare back. The best thing to do with creeps, I’ve found, is usually just to ignore them – give no indication that you’ve even noticed their presence. If they think they can get to you, they’ll keep trying, so whatever you do, you don’t open that door. You don’t invite the predators in. Not that it always makes a difference, in the end.

I tried to focus on my book, but my eyes skipped over the words with registering their meaning, and for some reason, it was the spiders I kept thinking of. The way their webs felt, breaking across my face as I ran, clinging and catching in my hair. That was almost ten years ago. I escaped. I’m not going to _tell_ you about the damned spiders, so don’t _fucking_ ask me.

I. I told him, though. 

Not right then, of course. Right then, I sat still, turning pages without reading them, trying to ignore the persistent, unsettling sensation of being watched. I wasn’t planning to get off at my stop. I kept hoping Sir Creepalot would leave first, but I couldn’t count on that, so the plan was to find a cafe in walking distance, just stay there until I was sure I hadn’t been followed, or make a few phone calls from a public place if I thought I had. And there’s a comforting anonymity in certain types of public places, or at least that’s something I used to believe. All those people there, but they have their own stories, whatever those might be, and they don’t care about yours. I had a favorite one in the area, this old family-run place that’s been there since forever. Nothing fancy, but the food was the best I’d ever tasted, so I figured I’d drop in and at least get something good out of this whole unpleasant experience.

He left the train at the stop just before the one I’d decided on, and the relief that hit me at the absence of that gaze was like a physical weight removed from my shoulders. I could think again, breathe easily, understand the words on the page in front of me. The thought crossed my mind that I could to change my plans now, just go on home, but I was feeling rather shaky by then, and I could use a cup of distraction, and really, if I’m honest, I just wanted to be off that train. So yes, I went to get dinner. It was a mistake. Because as I settled in to the comfortable chair in the corner of the little cafe, a man sat across from me – a thin man, with grey in his hair and terrible eyes, and he had this blank look on his face. Not unfocused. He was very focused. But it was... how can I put this? It was focused in the way that a camera lens might be focused, with nothing like awareness behind it.

It was, of course, the man from the train. You already knew that. There was a strange inevitability to it, and as he leaned forward, I realized that he hadn’t followed me, but only because he had known exactly where I would be.

He asked me a question. I remember those words very clearly, and the rough sound of his voice, and a sound beneath his voice that I realized dimly was a tape recorder running. I was being recorded, like this was some... sick interview, and he knew things about me that no one could have known. I mean, my best friend doesn’t even know my favorite color, and I –

He asked me what happened, the day I met the spiders. What I wanted to say was, _it’s none of your damn business_, but that wasn’t what I said. He asked his question. I answered it. I kept answering it. I wanted to stop, but I could feel the words pouring out of me like water through a breached dam, like this whole dark lake of memory and fear that I’d been holding back just came flooding out into the light, carrying me along with it like a piece of debris. As I spoke, it’s like I was there again, walking down that hallway in the dark with those dangling webs brushing my face and my mind filled with the horrible knowledge of something close and silent that thinks of you as prey. I could hear the sound of my heels on cracked tile, smell the dust, feel the tickle of something light landing on the back of my neck – but while I wouldn’t exactly call it pleasant, all of that was almost incidental. I lived through it once, you see. I knew I could live through it twice. I can live through it every night in my dreams and wake up knowing that the little fuckers didn’t get me then and they can’t get me now, and that’s _fine_. But spiders have never been what frightened me most.

And I was afraid. I could taste my own fear, the choking bitterness of it in the back of my throat, and I could feel it too, like a sack of wet concrete weighing on my chest and making it hard for me to breathe. I don’t. Like. Being seen. I don’t like talking about myself. I don’t like being known, and I _was_ known, down to every twist and whorl in my grey matter, down to the synapse, down to the molecule. I knew what my own fear tasted like, and thinking back to the intent, mindless need on that man’s face as he drank down every word I spoke, I _know_ that I’m not the only one. And all the while, he was just watching.

And then, well. And then my story was told. There was no more of it to tell. The stream of words had dried up, the lake was gone, and I was empty.

He might have said something. I’m not actually sure. I really didn’t care what he had to say to me. All I cared about was that he leave me alone. That he allow me to _be_ alone. I don’t know how long I stayed there, just sort of wrapped around myself, trying to make myself look smaller, but I knew I couldn’t stay forever. It was getting dark out there, and I needed to get home.

I didn’t take the train. I walked, even though it was a long way home and a storm was threatening, putting one foot mechanically in front of the other until at last I reached the sanctuary of my flat. I shut the door behind me, locked it, and stood there for a moment looking around at all my familiar furnishings, knowing that I was finally, blissfully alone.

But I didn’t feel safe.

I checked the locks. Double-checked them. I opened ever cupboard door, checked under the bed, checked behind the shower curtain, then checked the cupboards again, compulsively, like there was something in my brain that couldn’t comprehend that my home was still mine alone. I pulled back the curtains of my bedroom window, looked up and down the street, and of course there was no one there. Some cars rushing past, a newspaper caught on a lamp-post, an overturned bin in the alley. It was raining, and there was this traffic light shining at the intersection just past my window, blurry through the foggy glass. I stood there and watched it change from red to green and back again, looking out at that empty world looking back at me, and I couldn’t make myself move.

You know they have cameras on every corner these days, right? The police use them to catch speeders and crooks and the like. We’re never free of surveillance. It’s just... it’s so ubiquitous that we’ve just learned how to ignore it. I knew there had to be one of those cameras ahead, fixed on the traffic, and I know it’s paranoia, I know it is, but I swear I felt that hidden eye swivel in my direction. It wasn’t something that I could ignore like I had before, telling myself I was safe inside these walls. Even after I shut the curtains again, it was still there, and there were others, on different streets, those constant watchers that we’ve all accepted as the price of modern life. We learn to live with them, to just pretend they’re not there at all, but I couldn’t do that anymore. I boarded up that window, and all the others in my flat, but it didn’t make a difference. I think I knew, even then, that I would never be alone again. 

I imagine you’re probably wondering, having heard all that, what the hell I was thinking, coming here. I mean, I know how this works. The Archives, that recorder of yours, the... the watching eye. It’s all a little bit Tower of Sauron, isn’t it? Certainly the opposite of anywhere that someone like me wants to be, but believe me, I do realize that. There’s a reason, Mr. Blackwood, that I wanted to speak with you, and not with – you know. The Archivist. I’ve been doing a bit of research on my own, you see. It’s not been easy, but I have plenty of time. I don’t go out much these days, and I haven’t been sleeping. 

So, well, what I mean to say is. I’d like to ask for a job. Not with the Institute, of course. With your other boss. The one who can give me back what I need.

~

_Of course. Of course, another one. I think I had a feeling there had to be more of them out there, and it’s only fitting that they’d find their way here, but at least the, the encounter in question is several months old. I don’t – believe there’s been anything recent. He’s been trying. _

_I’ve passed on Miss Bailey’s information to Peter Lukas. Not sure that was the right decision, but I’m not sure turning her out on her own would be the right decision either, so I might as well give her what I can. _

_I wonder, does the Lonely have any use for people who aren’t afraid of it? Do any of these powers? Some of their servants certainly seem to love them, but love is not always entirely separate from fear. I sometimes wish I didn’t know that as well as I do._

_As for Jon, I suppose I already knew... what he is, and what he does, and needs to do for, for sustenance. I’ve known for a long time, and I thought I’d made my peace with it. I don’t want to say it doesn’t matter, because obviously it matters, but sometimes it doesn’t matter that it matters, you know? Because all of us have made the decision to climb into bed with monsters, knowing exactly what that means, because we believe the alternative is worse. We’re all compromised in one way or another. And Jon is. He’s hurt people. I’m not sure how conscious he was at the time, but I’m also not sure that Miss Bailey and our mysterious sewer engineer would find that much of a comfort, and it’s not like there are any take-backs. So. He’s hurt people, and he’s saved people, and I don’t know where the balance falls, except that maybe Robert Smirke is right, and there isn’t one. You can’t bargain with these things, you can’t use them, you can’t chain them, and if you try, they’ll just. Devour you alive, and other people with you. I know that. I do._

_It would be different, I think, if he wasn’t trying. _

_Oh, to hell with it. I’m already working for the bad guys. I don’t have to lie to myself about it too. Jon is what he is, but he’s also who he is. I’m certain he hasn’t lost that yet, and until he does, I won’t regret that he’s survived. I know what I’m willing to accept. I know where my loyalties lie._


End file.
